Q: You begin the book by describing the differing
views of George Kennan and Paul Nitze in 1949 over the development of the
H-bomb. What does that incident say about the opposing strands of thought
running through U.S. foreign policy?

A: I was fascinated by the very different ways that
Nitze and Kennan responded to the question of whether to develop the H-bomb.
Kennan turned to Shakespeare and the Bible, and peppered his 79-page case
against the “Super” with quotations from each. Nitze sought to master the physics
of nuclear fusion, met with Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, and presented a coolly
rational case in favor of developing the weapon – that if we don’t, the Soviets
will.

It was a debate fraught with meaning, because any
future thermonuclear war could potentially end human life on earth. It seemed a
good case study in how the history of U.S. foreign policy is often best
understood as intellectual history – that an ideational frame is vital.

Q: You focus in the book on nine different people. How
did you pick them?

A: This was a real challenge. I wanted to write about
individuals whose ideas were representative of particular eras, and erred
toward those who would allow me to cover a lot of ground. It was also important
that these individuals engaged with each other, either on the page or in
person.

My idea was to create a dialogue between these figures
– not write a series of potted biographies – and I was particularly influenced
by two wonderful books that achieved this: Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club
and Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise.

Q: The first person on whom you focus is Alfred Thayer
Mahan. Why did you choose to start with him, and how did his views affect those
who followed?

A: In many ways, Mahan was America’s first foreign policy
intellectual. His most important book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,
met with acclaim in the United States – it was read and admired by Theodore
Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge – and overseas, particularly in Germany and
Japan.

Its principal argument was that the United States must
abandon the small satisfactions of regional hegemony and any hope of attaining
economic self-sufficiency. Instead, the nation should emulate Great Britain in
building a dominant navy to enhance its security, project power globally, and
hence expand economically through free trade – where the nation’s advantages in
natural resources and ingenuity could best be brought to bear.

Mahan was an inescapable point of reference for many
of the individuals in the book. Woodrow Wilson was repelled by his materialism
and the absence of idealism in his thinking.

Charles Beard described Mahan as “the most successful
propagandist ever produced in the United States.” He observed that Theodore
Roosevelt “made Mahan’s work his bible of politics in the United States,” and
decried the expansionary, imperialistic policies – culminating with the
Spanish-American War – that his works had encouraged.

Walter Lippmann, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger
admired Mahan’s historical literacy and the clear-headed way he defined
America’s national interest.

In terms of legacy, the world in which we live
resembles the one Mahan said would come to pass in the late 19th century. The
Washington-led world economic system is dominated by free trade facilitated by
open shipping lanes; the U.S. Navy has no peer competitor in its ability to
project power; significant world crises are rarely resolved through the good
offices of the United Nations; and the United States reserves the right to act
unilaterally if its interests are threatened.

Whether you delight in these realities or not, it is hard
to deny that Mahan anticipated the shape of the modern world.

Q: The last person you focus on is Barack Obama, whom
you describe as a pragmatist. Why do you characterize him this way, and what do
you see as his foreign policy legacy?

A: President Obama is identifiably pragmatic in
responding to challenges on a case-by-case basis, shunning universal principles
and doctrines, and engaging in practical rather than abstract reasoning.

“Pragmatic” is often deployed as an epithet,
suggesting too great a willingness to bend or compromise. Yet there is much
more to it than that. In his classic series of lectures on the meaning of
pragmatism,

William James observed that “at the outset, at least,
it stands for no particular results. It has no dogmas, and no doctrines save
its method… the attitude of looking away from first things, principles,
‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits,
consequences, facts.” This fits Obama’s method well, it seems to me.

His foreign policy legacy is impossible to know. But
my feeling is that historians writing in 20-30 years’ time will view his
foreign policies more favorably than the snap judgments of the present.

The presidential predecessor that Obama most resembles
is Dwight Eisenhower, who was also criticized for passivity and drift at the
time, but whose cautious instincts look wiser with each passing year.

Q: In the book, you ask, "Should diplomacy be
practiced as a science, unveiling new discoveries to effect enduring change, or
as an art, responding creatively and intuitively to a world without
pattern?" How would you answer this?

A: George Kennan once cautioned that “international
relations are not a science,” and I largely agree – though there are some
exceptions, which I’ll come to later. The world is not a laboratory, and it is
impossible for the United States to effect the repeat of precise outcomes – particularly
when deploying military power as an agent of change.

Woodrow Wilson’s hopes of achieving a “scientific
peace” at the Paris Peace Conference – one that would cure the world of its
pathological tendency toward conflict, rather than merely manage its symptoms –
and Paul Wolfowitz’s utopian vision of catalyzing the democratization of the
Middle East through the invasion and occupation of Iraq were both born of
scientism: the belief that the core elements of scientific method – theory
testing, the detection of patterns, and the unveiling of new discoveries – can
be emulated to discern objective truth and make fundamental changes to the
structure of world affairs.

The appeal of scientism is not difficult to
comprehend. It holds out a promise of certainty – permitting a nation to
understand and tame the world’s volatility – that is highly seductive. But it
is mostly an illusion.

Only when every nation in the world has a more or less
equal stake in resolving a problem can foreign policy be approached in the
manner of science.

So George Kennan also believed that the dangers posed
by climate change and nuclear proliferation required Wilsonian solutions:
international collaboration to effect systemic changes to safeguard the
continuation of human life on earth. A broad commonality of outlook when faced
with an existential threat is the closest the world can get to controlled
laboratory conditions.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m planning to write a book about Sigrid Schultz
(1893-1980), a Norwegian-American woman who led a remarkable life. Schultz lived
in Berlin from 1911 to 1941 – working as a correspondent and later bureau chief
for the Chicago Tribune from 1920 – but was forced to return home to the U.S.
after being injured in a British bombing raid.

Fluent in French and German, Schultz interviewed Erich
Ludendorff, Hermann Goering, and Adolf Hitler, was framed for espionage by the
Gestapo, submitted copy to the Chicago Tribune under the name John Dickson to
conceal her identity from the Nazi authorities, and wrote incisively on a huge
range of topics.

She returned to Germany after the D-Day landings in
1944, following the First and Third Armies as they closed in on Berlin. She was
one of the first journalists to enter the Buchenwald concentration camp and later
covered the Nuremberg Trials. Schultz had a significant life and career and yet
her historical trace is regrettably faint. My hope is to help remedy that.

About Me

Author, THE PRESIDENT AND ME: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE MAGIC HAT, new children's book (Schiffer, 2016). Co-author, with Marvin Kalb, of HAUNTING LEGACY: VIETNAM AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY FROM FORD TO OBAMA (Brookings Institution Press, 2011).